DrunkenBlog

RM: IM Client?

I'm sorry if this is listed on your site somewhere, but in your recent post you have an image of your IM client. What client do you use? It looks much cleaner than Adium, which I use currently. Thanks. (Assuming you reply. If not picture me scowling at you.)

Ramanan

It's not a big deal, if I only had a nickel for when I get asked something like this and it's another reason why I really, really need a FAQ or something. I remember meaning to do one, and then getting sidetracked by other things, and until I do Paul @ Rogue Amoeba is going to be asking why on earth he's seeing me answering reader mail before getting back to him...

• I generally chat with AdiumX, although sometimes I fire up the official clients if file transfer needs a push because none of the third parties can deal well when clients are behind NAT'ed environments (A lack of NAT traversal, which would basically require them to use the official servers or setup their own).

  So, the screenshot I think you were confused by in the last post was AdiumX, with the menu bar of the chat window set to "text only" (Apparently I'm a minority in this, as I believe I found two bugs because no one else uses it sans icons -- and due to the way Cocoa works, it takes a separate routine for updating when you're using text-only versus text & icon or just icon). The theme is set to PurePlastics, grey vs. graphite, which can be found @ their Adium Extras section.

• I use Unsanity's ShapeShifter (which might trip you up into thinking its not AdiumX), because I know how it works and how it interacts with the apps I use, and because I just can't stand to look at brushed metal. At this point, I really just can't, and was getting that queasy feeling every time I looked at the Finder.app or iTunes or anything that made use of it.

  Whenever I'd log into Ubuntu and see its sane color scheme, I found myself letting go of a tightness in my breathing I wasn't aware I was holding -- it was really a godsend for me.

I'm not a big theme hound, and certainly am not one of those trying to make my computer look like one of those you see on TV -- I use themes on OS X to introduce sanity, and third party themes can often show just how hard creating an excellent all-around theme is. If I were asked to improve the theme-ing experience on OS X (and in general for other platforms), it almost always comes down to:

• They're spread all over the damn place. Sites exist that try to aggregate them, but not all list the same ones and you can easily end up with 15 different websites of theme authors and sites aggregating them. Thank god for RSS.

• There are two breaks when it comes to taste: Different tastes, and just plain bad taste. The first is a bygones, but the last can be a problem. Like a sense of humor, no one thinks they have poor taste, and usability often goes out the window when it comes to themes -- they're focusing on how it'll look in a screenshot.

• In the past, themes were basically things you applied by replacing the default Aqua graphics -- something like ShapeShifter just switches around some of the calls when an app launches. In a few places where Apple or an application maker is just doing things in custom non-standard ways, this can look funky -- like with iTunes 5 or the labels contextual menu in the Finder. Luckily, I can just put iTunes in the 'exclude' list so its not affected whatsoever, and luckily its not a widespread problem.

Different strokes for different folks, but I generally eschew anything with translucency or bright colors or if it doesn't ditch metal -- windows and menus are made to contain the content, not compete with it. No dark beasts I'd see on a screen while watching CSI, and don't even think about stepping to me with metal. It could be some insanely polished theme with a ton of work, but I just can't deal with it -- too many negative associations and puts the interface into the foreground too much.

Anywho, that's just what I like and why, and these are the ones I use:

• One

  I love this theme in such a hardcore way. There are touches of it that could be looked at if Brett wanted to improve it, but not many as its purpose is just to create a light gray-ish Aqua that also ditches metal and pinstripes and translucency. I dare you to try this theme for a week, and then try to switch back to Aqua without having your eyeballs crawl when you see the Finder.

• Cappuccino

  A muted earth-tones theme that makes you want to drink it -- I want to say this was originally a Windows theme that was ported over. This is one of my old favorites (I remember using it in OS9), and generally comes with a sister theme called "Orbital". Of the two, I vastly prefer Cappuccino, as out of every theme I've used, including Aqua, I'm always surprised at how easy it is to find the foreground window in Cappuccino. The only downside is that there seems to be a quirk with it and 10.4, so I'm looking forward to an update.

• GUIPod

  I really like this theme. It's heavy on the white, with slick and easy-to-read menus -- it's really well put together, and I was using it for quite awhile because I was having problems hunting down the One theme above. It's only Achilles Heel is that because it's going for an iPod feel it uses bits of bright orange accents everywhere. Once I found One again I stopped using it, but if it had a variation with more muted accents I'd probably be all over it.

I know there's a platinum or something theme bopping around that I looked at, but it was so similar to "One" which I mentioned above that I didn't give it much of a look. There's actually another theme out there I like which was similar to "One", and was basically very similar to Apple's current "Unified" interface and I used it all the time in Panther, but haven't had the time to go hunting it down throughout the myriad of theme sites.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    September 27, 2005, at 06:24 PM